This disclosure relates to ceramic, metal-boride-containing materials.
Metal borides, such as titanium diboride (TiB2), are used as monolithic structures and in ceramic composite materials. One method of fabricating titanium diboride includes hot pressing a mixture of titanium and boron at a temperature of greater than 2300° C. to react the titanium and the boron to form titanium diboride. This method is limited to forming monolithic structures of titanium diboride because the high required reaction temperature is incompatible with processing temperatures of most other materials of interest.
One known ceramic composite material includes silicon carbide (SiC) and titanium diboride. A method of fabricating this material includes mixing powders of silicon carbide and titanium diboride together, and hot pressing the mixture at high temperature/pressure to form a sintered body. However, because of inherent limitations in hot pressing, the shape of the sintered body is limited to relatively simple geometries.